1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a manufacturing method and a manufacturing apparatus for ceramic electronic components.
2. Discussion of Background
One of the methods in the known art through which ceramic electronic components such as capacitors, piezoelectric elements, PTC thermistors, NTC thermistors and varistors are manufactured involves first applying a ceramic coating, which is a mixture of ceramic particles, organic binder, plasticizer, solvent and the like, on to a flexible supporting body through the doctor blade method, to form an unbaked ceramic layer called a green sheet, and then forming electrodes constituted with palladium, silver, nickel or the like, on top of it through screen printing. In order to achieve a laminated structure, green sheets thus obtained are laminated together for the desired number of lamination layers and then pressed and cut into unbaked ceramic elements. Ceramic electronic components are manufactured by first burning out the binder in the unbaked ceramic element thus obtained by baking them at 1000 to 1400.degree. C. and then by forming terminal electrodes constituted with silver, silver-palladium, nickel, copper or the like on the baked bodies thus obtained.
When the manufacturing method described above is employed to manufacture, for instance, a laminated ceramic capacitor, one might consider, as a means for achieving miniaturization and greater capacitance, reducing the thickness of each ceramic layer, which is constituted of a dielectric body, and increasing the number of laminated layers. However, it is difficult to peel the unbaked ceramic layers from the flexible supporting body in order to laminate them. Especially, if the unbaked ceramic layers are thin, the unbaked ceramic layers cannot be peeled from the flexible supporting body successfully and this greatly reduces the yield. In addition, since the thin unbaked ceramic layers must be handled, defects such as an electrode shorting often occur in the resulting product.
As a means for solving these problems, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (KOKAI) No. 188926/1988 discloses a method whereby unbaked ceramic layers are thermally transferred with the flexible supporting body placed on top. However, in the case of the thermal transfer method, the positioning alignment for the upper electrode positioned on one surface of the unbaked ceramic layer and the lower electrode positioned on the other surface is poor. Furthermore, since it is necessary to perform thermal transfer every time a layer is laminated, the efficiency of production is reduced.
Moreover, as unbaked ceramic layers become thinner and the number of laminated layers increases, the quantity of flexible supporting bodies required to produce a ceramic electronic component also increases, leading to an increase in production cost.
In order to solve the problems described earlier, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (KOKAI) No. 342736/1994 discloses a method through which the process for forming a dielectric ceramic layer and the process for printing electrodes on the dielectric ceramic layer are repeated on the flexible supporting body for the number of times that corresponds to the required number of laminated layers to obtain a laminated body. However, this prior art publication does not disclose an effective means for preventing positional misalignment of the electrode patterns on the laminated body.